Blue
by Blackberry
Summary: The world could stand to have some more blue in it. Post-film, MMxRR, ONESHOT.


**Disclaimer: Megamind et al are owned by Dreamworks et al, I don't own them.**

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><p>Quite a lot of the leaves had fallen, and Roxanne smiled at the kids shrieking and chasing one another through the crunchy piles under the trees in the park. As she and Megamind walked along the path, nodding in acknowledgment of the waves and smiles they got fairly frequently now, she amused herself now and then by surreptitiously kicking some small clumps of leaves herself.<p>

She felt his long fingers tighten on hers after a particularly large pile of leaves went flying, and she looked up to see him grinning at her. "Enjoying yourself, Ms. Ritchie?"

"Of course," she smiled back. "It's gorgeous out today, and I'm with you." She leaned over for a kiss, and they slowed for a moment to savor it.

They resumed their pace, and Megamind gaze wandered to the kids playing. "Roxanne," he began, and then hesitated.

"What?"

"Did you ever give thought to...having children?" He wasn't looking at her, rather straight ahead, and his face was serious.

"Well, that was one of those things that I always figured would come along, or not. My mother has nagged me for years about grandchildren, but I don't care to have them just for the sake of having them." She glanced at his profile. "Though lately I've been thinking...I might like to have yours."

His head whipped around, and he stared at her in very nearly astonishment. She grinned, pleased at managing to surprise him, and a flush spread across his cheeks and tinged his ears pink. He blinked and melted into an adoring smile. She laughed and glanced down at their linked hands, pink and blue fingers intertwined. "I didn't think it would be possible, though. We're not the same species."

He chortled. "It wouldn't happen naturally, no. But think of whom you are speaking to! 'Impossible' is not in my lex-icon!"

"I thought the reset button was impossible."

"Well, okay. The science is pretty much impossible on that one. At least for now." He gave her a playful glare, raising an eyebrow. "But inter-species genetics is merely complicated. It's quite_ possible._"

She stopped, dragging him to a halt as well. "So, you're talking about...test tube babies, or something?"

He frowned slightly. "More like petri dish babies, but yes." He reached up to put his hands on her shoulders, his green eyes peering into hers. "Some choices would need to be made..."

"Boy or girl, you mean?"

"Well, yes, but more importantly, human or alien?" His mouth quirked. "Blue or pink? Hairless or with your marvelous tresses? Our offspring will have to have most of its genetic material from one parent, with a small fraction from the other. Our genomes are too different for a true hybrid." His smile was nervous, but hopeful.

She gaped at him. "Wow." She considered his expression. "This is something you want?"

He ducked his head, glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Very...very much."

She felt such a surge of love and affection that she couldn't restrain herself from grabbing him in a tight embrace. Her nose buried in his sweater, she breathed in his unique scent. "Blue, of course," she mumbled. "There's only one of you, and billions like me."

Megamind gently pushed her back so he could look her in the eye, frowning. "There's only one Roxanne Ritchie."

She snorted. "You know what I mean. Are we limited to only one, after all?"

His expression briefly became absorbed, unfocused. "Of course...I wonder how many would illustrate the best gene combinations? Yours, mine..." He mumbled to himself, then snapped his fingers, looking up at her with a manic grin. "We could have several dozen, that could cover a lot of them-!"

"Hold your horses, cowboy! One's enough for now!" she laughed, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him along as she resumed walking. "Let's get back home and we can talk it over tonight."

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><p>Minion got positively misty-eyed (or an underwater equivalent) at the very idea of Sir and Ma'am bringing forth a new generation when they discussed it at dinner that night. However, he had a firm opinion on one angle that Roxanne hadn't thought of.<p>

"Any children of yours need their own minions." He glanced apologetically at Roxanne. "I know it's not the usual thing for humans to have, but I'm Sir's and have to focus on him."

Megamind tapped his chin, regarding the alien fish. "Clones?"

Minion nodded. "I would be proud, sir" he said with quiet dignity.

For the next few weeks, a new section of the idea cloud sprouted and grew, not so much with notes on genetics as Roxanne would have thought, but schematics and figures for some kind of machinery. _He's not thinking of some kind of cyborg kids, like the brainbots, is he?_ she wondered with a some amusement and a small amount of trepidation. Meanwhile, her husband and Minion put several other projects on hold while they built some kind of exotic...fish tank, it looked like. Not large, but it had the funkiest, most complicated filtration and pump system she'd ever seen, much more so than most salt-water aquarium set-ups. It was set up and left running in a room that was kept carefully dark.

Roxanne was getting cautiously excited; she was half expecting at some point to have to start going through the hormone treatment process common to the usual procedure for in-vitro fertilization, having read up on it since their initial conversation. But Megamind waved that off. "I already have sufficient tissue samples," he said off-handedly.

"How do you mean?" she asked suspiciously. "When did you get them?"

"Wouldn't you like to know, _temptress_," he leered, and she actually blushed, but persisted, and he finally admitted that he could generate what he needed from just a few of her skin cells. He'd produced Titan from some of Metro Man's dandruff, after all, and the Infuser Gun was a _lot_ more complicated.

He showed her some readouts on his monitors—his complete genome, and her genetic profile. She couldn't make sense out of the stuttering letters constituting the DNA, just took his word for it when he showed her this or that point of genetic similarity or difference.

Finally, Megamind went more or less into seclusion in a sectioned off area of the lair; for several days she saw him only occasionally at breakfast, his eyes over-bright from lack of sleep, but cheerful and bubbly. He wouldn't give her any details on his progress. "All in good time, Ms. Ritchie!"

And then she came home from work one evening, tired but looking forward to having a couple of days off and wondered if she would spend any of it with her husband, and found him waiting impatiently for her just inside the hidden entrance. She barely had time to hand off her purse and coat to a hovering brainbot before he hurried her off to his workshop. He was practically _skipping._

He brought her to a halt inside the room, right in front of a tarp-covered..._something_ sitting on a work table. He rubbed his hands together briskly as he regarded her with a blinding smile. "Minion!"

Minion stood to one side, smiling, by a bank of switches. He snapped a couple of them, and the overhead lights went off, a spotlight came on, and Megamind twitched the tarp off with a flourish, revealing a machine that resembled...a large vat. It did have a dark glass window set in the front, and a couple of LED panels and some blinky lights, but it was comparatively utilitarian-looking for something Megamind came up with.

"Well? What do you think?" he asked, bouncing on his heels as gestured at his creation.

"Um," she said cautiously, "What is it?"

He smile grew broader and he flung his arms up towards it. "Behold—the GESTA-TOR 1000!"

She blinked. "A gestator?"

"Yes! Isn't it comfy-looking?" He came over to her, grinning like a madman, and drew her closer to the gadget. He pressed one of the buttons on the front, and a dim amber light came on inside the thing, revealing that it was full of liquid and some kind of soft, gooshy lining; now that she was close enough she could hear a gentle humming and some faint bubbling.

Megamind held her closer, and said softly, "It's all ready, whenever we want to start our children."

She yanked backward out of his grasp, appalled, her eyes huge. "You mean they'll grow in a _vat_ and not in their _mother_?"

Megamind blinked at her in confusion. "Yes?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Minion flinch, and casually back out of the room.

Roxanne just glared at Megamind and crossed her arms. "I thought we were having a baby, not a _science experiment_. That-" she nodded at the machine- "does not look 'comfy.' It looks cold and, and, clinical, and _impersonal_." She sniffed, her eyes starting to water, and she looked away. "You can't bring a _child_ into the world like a, a brainbot or something. It's not right."

"Roxanne." Megamind came forward, his arms outstretched; she backed away with a scowl, but he persisted and folded her into a hug. "How did you think you would be able to give birth to a baby with a giant head?" he murmured in her ear, amusement in his voice. "Even with your deliciously wide hips-" She reared back to shoot a death glare at him and he instantly dodged, "-er, generous but non-distensible human pelvis-" and she shuddered slightly at that image, "it would be very uncomfortable."

She turned her face away, her arms still folded stiffly against her chest, resisting his cuddle stubbornly. "I didn't think about it. Cesarean, I suppose."

"But if we were to have twins to start..." he began.

"Twins!" Now she turned to look at him.

"Certainly. Both blue as you requested, but I thought a boy and a girl..." there was a laugh in his voice and his arms tightened as he smiled at her. "I thought that would be a reasonable beginning, but even one would require a lot of room." He held her at arms length now, to look in her eyes, a serious expression settling on his features. "In vivo gestation could also be dangerous, both to you and to them. There could be any number of complications. This," and he waved back at his invention, "is designed to be a comfortable, secure and nurturing environment for the eleven months or so that will be required."

"_Eleven_ months!" Her eyebrows shot up. _Maybe a vat would be more comfortable...certainly for me!_

"Yes, that was typical, according to Minion." His eyes twinkled, and she relaxed back into his arms with a little scowl. "Does that make the idea a tad more acceptable, Ms. Ritchie?"

"Hmph." She moved forward to look at it again, pressed the button that lighted the interior, peered in. "This won't scar them emotionally or anything, not hearing a mother's heartbeat?" She pressed her hand to the side; it was warm, and pulsed gently.

"Not at all. I was gestated in one much like it," Megamind replied easily. "In fact, I-"

"Um, not sure that's much of a recommendation," she interrupted with a smirk.

"Roxanne!" He scowled briefly at her, before his face softened in reminiscence. "I remember how impatient I was to get out of mine, and how welcoming my parents and relatives were when I was lifted out on my due date. It was a shock, going from my warm amniotic bath to air—it was cold and uncomfortable at first but exciting."

She had nothing to say to that—he remembered being _born_?-but considered the invention before her. Cold, impersonal machine, or safe habitat for developing children? Megamind's, and hers?

Did she trust him?

She took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. "Let's do this."

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><p>It took some negotiation—why he wanted to start with twins, to begin with—but she came to agree with him. Both companionship and competition, and as a test for future efforts, though she felt guilty for thinking of them as a test run.<p>

He took several more tissue samples, spent time closeted in one of his labs, the one he kept sterile. The monitors showed him puttering around with petri dishes, just as he said, and unidentifiable lab equipment, measuring and dripping and fiddling with things and it took _days_. But one day he came out of the lab, snapping his gloves off and pulling his procedure mask down to grin at her. "Okay, I have two perfect blastocysts going. Shall we transfer them to the Gesta-Tor?"

She shrieked in delight and jumped on him, and he laughed.

A few hours later, Megamind carried two otherwise unremarkable glass cylinders to where the Gestator 1000 now resided, a freshly painted, cheerful little room with a rocking chair and a couch in it, accompanied by Minion and Roxanne. He went around to the back of the machine and opened a panel, and carefully placed each tube in a holder, punched a button, and the panel slid closed. The machine made a few humming and whirring noises, and then settled down to a slow pulse. Megamind came around to the front, looked at the panels and peered inside, then turned around with satisfaction to tell them, "All done!"

She was almost disappointed. "That's it?"

He stripped off his gloves, and said smugly, "Yes. Everything is on track. Now we just have to wait!"

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><p>She started to dream of pretty blue babies with green eyes.<p>

All winter, she would wander in, sometimes sitting and reading, sometimes just coming in to look into the dark window. Megamind warned her not to turn on the light in there too frequently ("It's not a _snow-globe_, you know. There are _children_ sleeping!") but every once in a while she can't resist, especially after they are big enough to be actually visible. Plus he couldn't seem to resist looking in from time to time himself.

Spring and summer passed, and she spent more time in the cheerful room—the kids' room. She watched them go from crude blobs to actual babies, though their eyes were closed, and she wondered if they knew she was there. Megamind assured her they did and could hear her voice (external audio pickups), and she read them stories from the stock of children's books she had amassed. The books would be outgrown by the time they are born, so she wanted to acquaint them with Dr. Seuss before it was too late.

Early fall, and there were two little Minions, each with their own brightly-colored chimp-body construct to hold their globes, also wandering into the kids' room to check on their progress. Roxanne thought they were the cutest thing ever and complimented Minion, who became embarrassed and credited Sir.

Finally, the due date approached. Roxanne's parents flew in and tried to conceal their dubiousness of the whole proceeding for their daughter's sake. Warden, who tried to conceal how pleased he was to be invited, squinted at the brainbots and the lair until brought to the kids' room. Minion stood by, ready with towels and blankets like a midwife with a abnormally toothy grin.

And Megamind, whose hands shook as he popped open the top of the Gestator, wore an enormous, terrified smile as he turned to Roxanne. "Ready, love?" he breathed.

She was equally scared and exhilarated. "Ready," she said.

Megamind took a deep breath and pressed a button. The machine whirred, ground a bit, emitted some wet, gloppy noises, and two blue domes rose into sight, shiny and sort of slimy-looking. Roxanne and Megamind each grabbed a towel, reached in for a baby, then dried them quickly and wrapped them in brand-new baby blankets, blue with lightning bolts.

Roxanne stared at the child in her arms. _My little boy_. The baby looked her with intelligent interest, a wide smile on his round little face. She glanced over at Megamind, to see him coo down at his daughter.

"They have blue eyes," she said slowly. "I thought they'd have green eyes. Like yours."

"Next time," he said, staring straight into her blue, blue eyes with a tiny smile.

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><p><strong>AN: Okay, this isn't much, but the biological plot bunny kept nibbling until I wrote it down. **

**The Gestator 1000 is borrowed directly from the uterine replicators in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. I claim no credit for the idea of an artificial womb.**


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